The U.S. Hockey League is making expansion plans with a focus on adding teams in California, Nevada and Arizona.<\/p>\n
The league on Thursday announced it has a memorandum of understanding with a group of stakeholders to add teams in the region. It\u2019s unclear how many franchises the current 16-team Tier 1 junior hockey league will add and when, with more details to be revealed on June 24, the USHL said.<\/p>\n
The agreement was made in partnership with USA Hockey and the NHL. The USHL last expanded in 2014, with the addition of the Madison Capitols in Wisconsin.<\/p>\n
A move into the desert and California would vastly expand the footprint of a league that features teams spread across the Midwest \u2014 from the Dakotas to Ohio. And it would open the league to a growing market of fans and players.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe expansion is about more than adding teams. It is about expanding opportunity,\u201d commissioner Glenn Hefferan said.<\/p>\n
The USHL is nation\u2019s top developmental junior league, and produced 21 players who were members of the U.S. men\u2019s gold medal-winning team at the Milan Cortina Games.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe couldn\u2019t be more excited about the expansion into the west of the USHL,\u201d Los Angeles Kings president Luc Robitaille said. \u201cThis has been a group effort by multiple parties all with the shared goal of combining our influence to ultimately grow the game of hockey.\u201d<\/p>\n
The league\u2019s plan to expand also comes at a time when the junior landscape in North America has shifted in the wake of the NCAA allowing Canadian Hockey League players to compete at U.S. colleges for the first time last season.<\/p>\n
The rule change has led to the USHL and CHL competing for talent. Previously, Canadians had to choose to play in the USHL to maintain their college eligibility.<\/p>\n
The 61-team CHL \u2014 which oversees three leagues \u2014 has also discussed expansion plans, including increasing its eight-team presence in the U.S.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The U.S. Hockey League is making expansion plans with a focus on adding teams in California, Nevada and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":591611,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5108],"tags":[2666,3644,5180,2617,897,230,5179,2842,5,65834,5307,13257,4,3494,3492,63785,60785,48059],"class_list":["post-591610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-columbus-blue-jackets","tag-arizona","tag-blue-jackets","tag-bluejackets","tag-california","tag-columbus","tag-columbus-blue-jackets","tag-columbusbluejackets","tag-glenn-hefferan","tag-hockey","tag-junior-hockey-ushl-expansion","tag-luc-robitaille","tag-nevada","tag-nhl","tag-package-100502-member-choice-sports-option","tag-product-30599-ap-sports-news-s-wire-only","tag-product-40774-ap-arizona-sports-only","tag-product-40776-ap-california-sports-only","tag-product-40798-ap-nevada-sports-only"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116696037702824654","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=591610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591610\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/591611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=591610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=591610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=591610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}